Twitter Improves DMCA Policy: Alerts Public To 'Removed' Tweets

from the a-step-up dept

For years, we've criticized Twitter's DMCA policy, in which it completely disappears tweets that are subject to DMCA takedown notices it receives. The company, as part of its transparency campaign, has now changed its policy slightly, such that it will now replace the taken down tweet with one that indicates the tweet was removed due to a DMCA notice. While security researcher Mikko Hypponen has a tweet showing the text that Twitter is replacing tweets with, it quickly became clear that his tweet was a "joke" to show that it's easy to simply copy the general text that Twitter will be using:

This Tweet from @username has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder. Learn more.

The "replaced" tweets now link to this page with an explanation of Twitter's new DMCA policy. While that policy notes, thankfully, that it also sends all DMCA notices to Chilling Effects, it would be even cooler if the tweets in question linked to the Chilling Effects entry with the DMCA notice in question, so people could understand who removed the tweet and why. There may be some issues with the timing on that, but right now it leaves open a lot of questions about why certain tweets were removed. And, given that it's somewhat easy to "fake" the new tweets (even though faked ones won't have the "learn more" phrase linked), I wonder if these will have the same impact.

Cap'n! The twit filters canna take much more o' this!

Tweeticide! Twitter's been killing stuff left and right. Recent API changes are hurting programmers & tweeple with the new changes. It seems RSS is on the chopping block too, come March 5th, 2013. I wonder whats left. Even transparent backgrounds on avatars have become a PITA.

Hopefully soon there will be another Freemium service to replace Twitter once its done eviscerating itself. Twibes of tweeple be ready for the thundering exodus to the next best thing. #PITA